ABSTRACT
Modern sports nutrition guidelines promote a planned, personalised, periodised and practical approach to general eating patterns and special dietary strategies for each athlete. During training phases, an athlete's diet should allow the athlete to train hard, promote recovery and adaptation, achieve appropriate body composition, minimise the time lost to illness and injury, and maintain the enjoyment of food. During competition phases, special strategies of food and fluid intake before, during and between events may target the specific factors that might otherwise cause fatigue and loss of optimal performance during the event. These goals may need to be achieved within the context of travel or training/competing in a new or extreme environment. Furthermore, competition nutrition practices need to be tailored to the opportunities or rules that govern intake of food and fluid during an event. While the frontiers of sports nutrition are expanding due to the information being gathered from molecular approaches to sports science, advice from a sports dietitian or recognised sports nutrition expert is often needed to help the athlete translate knowledge into practice, including consideration of the special needs of athletes with impairments.
